A Moment of Truth: A Complete Bonus Set (A Matter of Trust #1-2) (33 page)

So now, not only am I weak from hours of vomiting, I’m dizzy and freaked out. I mean,
what if!

I take the test, set it on the counter, and watch the wetness seep across the little window. There’s one line—the control line. I wait.

And wait.

And wait.

My heart is pounding.

What if . . .

Chapter Seven

A knock on the door startles me. “You okay in there?” Dan asks.

“Yes.”

“Can I come in?”

“Yes.”

He opens the door and peers inside. “How’s it look?” He’s smiling.
Why is he smiling at this?

“It’s negative.” I hold it up, showing him the single, not pregnant line. “Told you. ‘What if’!” I mimic him, rolling my eyes and laughing.
But really, what if?

He laughs, and a fleeting sadness swoops in and out of my mind. I swallow, reminding myself that I’m weak and slightly delirious and very dehydrated—and not pregnant. We head out to the bedroom, where the doctor is writing things on a pad. I crawl into bed again.

“Negative?” the doctor asks.

“Correct.”

He nods. “I think you have a virus, but I’ll be back mid-morning to see how you’re feeling okay? For now, here’s some anti-nausea medication. You also need to get hydrated or you’ll have to go to the hospital. Chew on ice chips if that’s what feels best. Go slow about it, but you have to drink.” The doctor puts a Gatorade on the nightstand before he gets up. He gathers his things. “Feel better, Claire. See you in a few hours.”

Dan walks him to the door and comes back to the bedroom a minute later. He sits on the edge of the bed, smiling. “Why are you smiling?”

He leans his face into mine and widens his eyes. “What if?” He laughs and pulls back. “You looked like you’d seen a ghost when he asked you to take that test.”

“You looked the same!”

“Did not . . . I think you’d look cute with a big tummy.” He rubs my stomach. “After all the vomiting, you’ve got room for it now.” He snickers.

“Bite your tongue!” I say, moaning, as another wave of nausea hits me.

“Feeling ill again?”

I nod and curl into a ball.

He strokes my head until I fall asleep.

***

Over what are my last few days in Mexico, I slowly begin to recover, which is good, but I have to leave! And in a flash, I’m back on the plane heading to New York, sulking that my time with Dan was too short, that it was just as depressing as ever to say good-bye “for now,” especially when I’m not exactly sure when we’re going to see each other again.

Moping my way out of the airport, I pass a newsstand and . . . my face, Dan’s face, and the word
PREGNANCY
screams across the middle of a magazine cover.
What?
It’s on one, two, three, four, five—oh my God, nearly all the magazines! I grab and flip open the nearest one. An entire article dedicated to our “celebration vacation,” my morning sickness, and a picture of a positive pregnancy test! My head expects this sort of thing, but my heart doesn’t—it’s knocking against my ribs, which only gets harder when I see a photo of me in my itsy-bitsy bikini, zoomed in, with a big, red circle around my stomach and arrows pointing to my growing baby bump. And it looks like I have one! I look down at my stomach.
How can this be? Did I eat too much?
I’ve never really had body issues, but I do now! I throw the magazine back on the shelf and hurl myself into a cab before I cry.

I whip out my phone and realize it’s still off from the flight. I turn it on, and it’s a symphony of pinging messages. Before I can check them it starts ringing.

“Hi, Camille.” I breathe a sigh of relief—I need her rational mind and common sense right now.

“Hi, Claire.” She giggles. No, there’s a set of giggles. “Bridget wants to know if she should bedazzle blue or pink booties.”

“What? Screw you, Camille. Did you see the baby bump they said I have? This is not funny!”

“Definitely not funny—it’s hilarious! Wait. Unless you’re really pregnant. Are you?”

“No! I am
not
pregnant.”

“Okay, okay, just checking.” She’s laughing on the other end. “Oh, and by the way, your mom called.”

“My mom called you?”

“Well, she called my cell and Bridget’s, too. She left messages on ours saying yours was off or you just weren’t answering her.”

“Fuck me.” I sink down into the seat, knowing that discussing the whole tabloid rumor thing with my mother will be a fresh hell.

“Look on the bright side—she’s talking to you again.”

“Yeah. Awesome . . . ugh. I’m almost home. I’ll see you in a few.” I arrive at the apartment within minutes, and both Bridget and Camille are on the sofa, watching an entertainment show that’s flashing photos of Dan, then a couple of me and those same damn circled photos. They cut to a commercial, and once again, I cannot believe this is my life.

“Did you purposely turn this on?”

“Oh, calm down, Claire. Anger isn’t good for the baby.” Bridget snickers and pats the space next to her on the sofa.

I plop down next to her and cross my arms, glaring at them and their smiling faces. Bridget turns up the volume when the stupid TV people start saying:

“Rumor has it that Daniel Chase, one of the world’s sexiest men alive, might be adding ‘dad’ to his resume. It seems Daniel and his rumored girlfriend and musician, Claire Parelli, were vacationing in Mexico where Daniel is on location filming ‘Sure to Sea.’ Reps for Daniel decline to comment, but eyewitnesses have spotted the two lovebirds getting cozy.”
Several shots of Dan and I walking on the beach shuffle across the screen.
“Inside sources say a doctor accompanied Daniel to his hotel room where Ms. Parelli was dealing with a difficult case of morning sickness. But of course, until confirmation is made, we don’t know for sure. But we’ll stay on baby-bump watch for now.”
They end with a photo of me in my swimsuit and zoom in on my belly.

I know my mouth hangs open, because I think a bug just flew inside. I start coughing and coughing, and Bridget starts smacking my back.

“Are you going to throw up? It’s not that bad, Claire. I swear.” Camille comes to sit on the other side of me.

I finally gain some control as the irritation passes. I breathe deeply several times and wipe my eyes. “Ooh.” I fan my face.

“Don’t worry. You’re a hot baby mama.” Bridget snickers.

“You!” I smack her arm. “I can’t believe this! Celebration vacation my ass. I spent almost the entire time puking—from a virus, not a pregnancy! The doctor made me take a pregnancy test, which was negative, so he could prescribe me medication! And how does anyone know this, anyway? Most of the time we spent together was in the bathroom with him holding my hair back and me retching.”

“Sexy,” Bridget says, chancing a smile, but protecting her arm all the same.

“Ugh.” I flop back against the back of the couch. “And now my mother, who wasn’t speaking to me, is calling and expecting an explanation. She didn’t even know I was in Mexico, and I know she’s going to give me shit for it.”

“Why do you care what your mother says? She’s horrible to you,” says Camille.

“I don’t know . . . because she’s my mother? Doesn’t everyone want their mom to, I don’t know, approve of their lives? I know, it’s stupid.”

Camille rubs my leg. “Nah. I get it—even though she’s horrible, she’s still your mother.”

I nod. “Exactly, and I hate feeling like I’m always disappointing her.”

We’re silent for a moment. “Disappointment is her problem, not yours,” Bridget says.

I’m a little stunned that such a sober assessment comes from Bridget, but she’s right. I wish I could shake it as easily. “Do I look pregnant?” I stand and twist from side to side, offering them every view of my stomach. When they say nothing, I raise my top a bit and continue swiveling.

They burst out laughing.

I stop. “What?”

“Because if you have a pregnancy belly then break out the harpoon and call me Orca!” Bridget laughs so does Camille.

I plop back down. “You two are useless . . . and I’m being bitchy. Sorry.”

“You are, but we’re used to your bitchiness.” Bridget snickers.

“It’ll blow over soon enough,” Camille says. “Did you have fun while you were there?”

“During the three minutes I wasn’t hurling? Yes, it was amazing.” I sigh. “I miss him.”

“Then focus on those three minutes.” She offers me a wide smile. “It’s all that matters. The other stuff—the TV, the rumors, your mother—all of that is just static. You’re going to have to learn to tune it out if you’re going to be with him. You know that, right?” Camille asks gently.

“Yeah, I know.” That’s exactly the case—no matter how private I am, his life isn’t and I can’t expect it to be, so I’d better learn to suck it up and fast.

Suddenly, my phone rings. I see it’s my mother. “Hi, Mom.” My stomach tumbles. I head into my room while Bridget says, “I didn’t think phones existed in Mordor.” I shake my head at her and close my door. “How are you?”

“Hello, Claire,” my mom says in her even, quiet, and sinister way. “I’m wondering the same about you. Did you have a nice vacation in Mexico?” Again, nice and even.
Here we go.

“Yes, thanks.”

“It’s a funny thing, Claire. I told you before how awful it was to find out through the TV that my daughter had flown to California, but I guess it didn’t matter to you, because this time you flew to a foreign country to visit your actor boyfriend, and I had no idea until I turned on that ridiculous Celebrity Central show.” The guilt seeps through the airwaves like a plague.

“You weren’t speaking to me.”

“What are you talking about?”

“The day I came over to get my stuff . . . you left and told me to keep in touch.”

“Because clearly I’m in the way of your life. I never said I didn’t want to speak to you. What kind of mother would say that? The point is, what if something happened to you? I’d have to wait for the police to arrive? For the orange man on that Celebrity Central show to tell me you’re dead?”

Guilt slaps me across the cheek. “I’m sorry, I should have called to tell you.”

“Yes, you should have. Not knowing where you are or who you’re with is unsettling, to say the least.”

“I’m fine, Mom.”

“Yes, I know you’re fine. I saw you coming back on the TV.” For a second, I wonder what she’s talking about, but then I vaguely remember photographers outside the airport taking pictures from a distance. There’s silence between us, which only adds girth to the iceberg of awkward.

“I know we don’t always see eye to eye, but you never seem to think about how your life affects us, do you, Claire? Regardless of anything else, you are our daughter, and when we hear about events in our daughter’s life through the TV, it’s insulting and upsetting, to say the least.” She stops talking for a minute, and I hear her huff. “So—are you pregnant?”

“No! I’m not pregnant. You can’t believe what you see on TV, Mom.”

“Which is my exact point! I’m only finding out about you and your life from the TV!”

Oh God.
I rub my face. “I will call you before I fly anywhere else, okay?”

“Fine, Claire. I just don’t understand why you can’t talk to us.”

“Because you don’t like my life.”

“Perhaps if you didn’t keep everything so secret all the time, we’d be more open.”

Oh yeah, that’s it. I should be more open. Ha!
“I don’t mean to keep secrets.”
Yes, I do.

“Obviously, you’re hell-bent on having a relationship with this boy, so when are we going to meet him? Is he with you now?”

“No, he’s on location filming, and I don’t know when we’ll get together next because his schedule changed to fit in a second movie on top of the one he’s doing now.”

“So complicated,” she says as if to herself. “Will he at least be around for your birthday?”

“I think so.”
No idea.

“Well, I expect to meet him then, Claire. You’re coming over that day, right? It’s Avery’s fifth birthday, too, you know. You can’t miss it.”

“Right. Well, I just have to make sure he can—”

“He can what? If he cares about you, he’ll celebrate your birthday with you and with your family. I’ll be sure to set him a place.”

Fuck.
“Okay, I’ll see you then.”

“Have a nice night.”

“You too, Mom.”

I wander back out to the living room where, thankfully, there is no entertainment show on, only some kind of sitcom I’ve never seen.

“So, how’d it go?” Camille asks.

I lie on the sofa, my legs across Camille’s lap. “She is the master of guilt. Seriously. She should be some kind of tour guide for guilt trips. And she wants to meet Dan—on my birthday.”

Bridget bursts out laughing. “Happy birthday to you!”

“Yeah, it should be a great time. Woot.” I roll my eyes.

“I can see it now: Dan twisting and turning under your mom’s painful and pointed questions.”

Camille laughs. “To be a fly on the wall . . .”

“Ugh.” I check my cell for the other messages I’ve yet to listen to. There are five from Rita, two from Camille, and one from Dan that says, “Hey, call me when you get in, all right? Hope you had a nice trip back.”

So I head back into my room and call him.

“Hi, Claire. Len called me right after you left, warning me what was going to be coming out, and I just wanted to see how you’re doing.”

I can hear the worry in his voice—like maybe this will turn out like last time. “Well . . . I wasn’t expecting my face and belly on magazines, that’s for sure.”

“Are you cross?”

“Not really. I mean, no female wants to look huge and pregnant if they’re not. But my mother—ugh. She makes all this worse. She’s pissed I didn’t tell her I was going to Mexico, let alone the whole pregnancy thing.”

“She didn’t know you were visiting me?”

“No. God, you know, my visit with you was so short, we didn’t really get to catch up. Last time I saw her, she didn’t even want to speak to me! So, no, I didn’t bother to tell her.”

He’s silent. “My mum would be upset, too.”

“Are you scolding me?”

“No, I’m just saying my mum would be upset, too.”

“Do you tell your mom every time you’re going on a plane?”

“Yes.”

“You do?” Realization hits me, and it makes me giggle. “Oh my God. You’re a momma’s boy, aren’t you?”

“What? I am not.”

“You totally are. Do you call her every day?”

“You know, you sound just like my sisters. They’re always calling me the Golden Child, but I’m not, and I don’t call my mum every day. We just . . . understand each other.”

“Momma’s boy.”

He laughs. “Anyway . . . “ He clears his throat. “How are you with the reports? You want Len to make a statement or something?”

“That the Golden Child didn’t knock me up? No. They’re just going to say what they want anyway, right?”

“Yes. You don’t look pregnant, by the way. Far from it, actually. My mother is going to want to fatten you up when she meets you.”

When she meets me . . .
Meeting the parents is a huge step, obviously, and while I’m sure his parents are lovely, mine are . . . well, it’ll probably be like an interview, no, more like an interrogation, and although I want him to meet them, I can’t imagine it turning out all right. Regardless, I still have to ask him to meet them, don’t I? I guess now makes as good a time as any. “Speaking of meeting mothers . . . um, my mother would like to meet you and for you to meet the rest of my family and whatnot,” I say, mumbling my way through the last half.